But I Know It's A Lie
by LucyCrewe11
Summary: Eight years after the Romanovs are killed, Sasha (somewhat unwillingly) meets with a woman claiming to be Anastasia. She's quite convincing... But he knows it's a lie. One-shot.


**AN: Just a little one-shot based on the character Sasha from the book Anastasia's Secret. Sort of an idea of what could have happened to him after the Romanovs were shot. I kind of had to just go by history and try to guess how his character would react, since the book ends before they get to the House Of Special Purpose. **

But I Know It's A Lie

An_ Anastasia's Secret_ one-shot by LucyCrewe11

Sasha doesn't like that he's rich. It feels like dirty money. As though he shot the Romanovs himself and his streaming wealth comes from the jewels stripped from the women's corsets.

The realty, however, is entirely different. He's earned every bit of his money honestly. As a businessman, not a solider. But he's always a soldier first in his own mind. And not a particularly good one at that; too much in love with the tsar's youngest daughter to be Bolshevik, but far too Bolshevik to protect the tsar's family from their gut-wrenching fate.

It's been almost eight years, and he still can't make himself forget that horrible night.

He wasn't a shooter in that room. He didn't know that's what they were going to do. After everything he went through to keep informed, to stay on as a guard even after all the other guards who were 'too friendly' to the family were dismissed, he hadn't even _known_.

Those bastards lumped him in with the lustful idiots who thought they were going to bring the family to the woods and do something unspeakable to the girls and the German tsarina before killing them.

Some of those monsters had even planned to tie the tsar up and make him _watch_.

He'd thought, foolishly, by being there, he could somehow protect Anastasia. Get her away before the men could touch her.

It wouldn't have been easy, of course. She wasn't one to desert her family. If she had been, she would have already been saved; already taken the way out he had gone through hell to give her, before Yekaterinburg. But her heart -aching for him as much as for her family, too scared to be all alone- had been her undoing.

Well, he'd planned to _make_ her. To save her life was worth traumatizing her; it was worth breaking her heart.

But he hadn't expected the cart full, not of living, frightened Romanovs, but of lifeless corpses.

He'd been so horrified he'd run away in the ensuing frenzy from his angry comrades, also disgusted -though for different reasons- to see the family already dead.

Looking back, he wishes he hadn't run. He wishes he'd had the sense to check, to find out if one of the grand duchesses was still alive, just so he could say with certainty that every woman claiming to be her was a pretender.

Except he couldn't. He couldn't take it. Couldn't bear to see the little girl who'd stumbled across him playing his balalaika and had grown into the young lady he loved as a dead, blood-stained body.

So he ran away, made it across the Russian border using only his own wits and sickeningly good fortune. And one way or another, he'd found himself in England in the end. Working his way up, he grew richer and richer.

Now he has a valet, a motorcar, a luxurious apartment, and more money than he could ever spend.

Only none of it_ means _anything. Not if she's dead. Like he knows -when he isn't being uncharacteristically stupid and sentimental- she is.

In his nightmares, he sees the cart being pulled up. The contour of plied bodies shows itself dimly in the bad lighting. He feels his own feet starting to run, his breath coming in gasps, the tears than can flow only from one eye running down his face in a thin line of stinky salt...

Then he wakes.

His valet, Jenkins, is used to this and -knowing his boss will soon be awake- begins to run the bath with no commentary.

For this, Sasha is grateful.

Jenkins knows about Anastasia, though; he's one of the few Sasha's told. He was drunk when he told him, mean and dour on the vodka.

Sasha wakes, stretches, undresses, and slips into his bath.

"I do not mean to distress you unnecessarily, Sir," Jenkins breaks into the morning silence, "but she's still waiting for a reply. She's sent any number of telegrams."

Without being told, he knows what 'she' his valet is referring to. And, in a cold, bitter way, it infuriates him.

"She's a damned liar," says Sasha, leaning his head back against the marble tub dismissively. "Just like that Anna Anderson nut." He closes his eye. "She didn't even _look_ like Anastasia. Tatiana, _maybe_, but not Anastasia."

"But with all due respect, Sir," says Jenkins, "the Anderson lady never sought you out. She didn't even _know_ about you. Proof enough she wasn't who she said she was. But this woman... There is something different about her. She claims to know you. She mentions your balalaika." He pauses, letting that sink in. "The only Anastasia imposter that _did_ seem to know something of you did not know about your eye-patch. This one does. She mentions kissing your scar."

"I don't want to meet her, Jenkins," he says.

"I understand, Sir, but she isn't going away." Jenkins holds up a towel as Sasha steps out of the bath, his futile attempt at morning relaxation ruined, as it always is, one way or another. "It's been months. She wishes you to meet her at an old theater in Canterbury."

"How fitting. Where else would one go to meet an actress?" Laughing darkly, Sasha takes the towel, dries himself, and then dresses himself.

He doesn't let his valet _put his clothes on him_; he is highly critical of the posh Englishmen who do. Setting garments out is one thing, not being able to put your own pants on is another. A reasonable man needs to set limits. Needs to be able to wipe his own bottom, if nothing else. Sasha has no respect for men who are so soft they can't figure out how a bloody pair of _socks_ work.

"Be strong, Sir," Jenkins says. "It might not be so bad."

"Of _course_ it will be," Sasha says, shaking his head. "Actually, it's _worse_. Because I already hate her."

"How can you hate a woman you've never seen, Sir?"

"Because I know she's a phoney. I know there's nothing in anything she can possibly have to say to me. I _want_ to walk in there and see Anastasia, an older version of the girl I knew. I want to see callouses on her fingers from playing the balalaika. I want to see her smile again. And I know I might. If the actress is any good at what she does, I honestly _might_." He puts on his eye-patch but allows Jenkins to straighten it for him when he glances in the mirror and sees that it's not hanging correctly over the scar. "But I know it's a lie."

And he hates her for that. More than anything, more than the morals of the charade, he hates her for not being real.

* * *

She wears peach colors trimmed with light blue and a string of pearls around her neck. There are pale orange flowers on her simple hat pinned to her red-brown curls. She moves in and out of the slates of light that spread through the partially boarded windows.

Back and forth she is pacing. She is waiting for him. For her Sasha. Somewhere in her mind she's convinced he's the only man she has ever or will ever love. She is convinced they know each other. Whether or not it's true might not really matter. Because maybe she believes it so deeply she _makes_ it true. In her own mind, if no place else. All she wants in this world is for him to recognize her.

A door opens. Jenkins, the man she spoke to on the phone, the only one to reply to her endless string of expensive telegrams she couldn't afford, steps aside to let his boss enter the room.

She leans forward as he strides in. There are new worry-lines on his face, but the dusty light softens these and makes him look exactly how she remembers -or else pretends she remembers- him.

"Hello," he says stiffly.

"Oh, Sasha!" she cries.

"Do I know you?"

"Can't you see it's me?" That he of all people should not know her! It is unthinkable.

"You've stepped out of the light," Sasha tells her gruffly. "I only have the one eye to see with, as you should perfectly well know."

She moves into a slanted beam of light and lifts her eyes to his.

All at once he's struck by something he hadn't expected. Her eyes are that cornflower blue, same as Anastasia's. Of course they would be, or else how could she pretend so effectively, but he wasn't prepared for the feelings the similarities might stir in him.

That Anderson bitch looked nothing like her; from one photograph alone, pulled out of a newspaper and then crumpled and tossed angrily into a wastebasket, he could tell. But_ this_ woman resembles her closely. She does not merely look like a Romanov, she looks like an older version of _Anastasia Romanov_. His friend, his lover. It's almost too much for him. Especially since -good actress that she apparently is- she has the mannerisms down too.

"_Sasha_?" she says, her voice cracking ever so slightly.

It's her voice that jolts him back into sane reality. This is not Anastasia. She looks like her, sounds like her, acts like her, but it's not her. How does he know? Simply because of how his body responds to her presence. It tenses. It doesn't relax like meeting an old friend. Sasha knows this woman is beautiful; he feels sorry for her and hates her quite a lot less than he expected to; but he also knows he's never met her before.

This is a stranger standing before him in this theater.

A stranger to whom he cannot give the recognition she craves. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," she says, reaching for his hand with trembling fingers. "It's been so long. The shock alone..."

"No, I'm sorry," he corrects her, "but I don't know you."

"How _can _you? Oh, _Sasha_!"

He pulls his hand away before she can fully grasp it. "I've met you, and you seem... You seem like a nice lady, if a little confused. But you're not Anastasia. I won't ask you how you found out about me and that she and I were...were_ friends_..." He takes a deep breath, pausing for a long moment as her face becomes more and more crestfallen. "However, I think you should go now."

"I..." she says shakily. "I did not make plans to go anywhere. I thought you would take me with_ you_."

"Look, I think I know what this is," he says, so gently he surprises himself. "You want someone who knew Anastasia to say they know you. So your grandmother will want to see you. That's it, yes?"

"No, that's not it!" she exclaims, exasperated. "I _love _you! I've been searching for you for so long, Sasha."

"I was not so hard to find," he says dryly.

"You _were_," she insists. "And I was frightened. I have been very frightened. All that fear almost went away when I saw your face, when you walked in this room. I knew I was safe. Because I was with you again at last. After eight whole years of being utterly alone. And now you tell me you don't _know_ me?" Her cream-colored heel hits the uneven wood floor in a furious stamp. "You don't know me?_ Me_! Who you loaned your balalaika to."

"You could being guessing about the balalaika."

"Guessing!" she huffs. "When I never told anybody about it. Our love story isn't in any book, Sasha. You know I couldn't have read all the things I can say to you now. It's proof enough."

"You want to see the empress, not me." His tone grows gruff again. "Don't waste my time."

"I don't _care_ about Grandmama! She won't see me, I know she won't. But I thought _you_ might!"

"Anastasia would not forsake her grandmother so easily."

"You have no idea what I've been through, Sasha," she whimpers. "I've gotten so tired. I don't have the strength to face those that stand in my way to reaching her."

"But you have strength enough to face me?"

"You _give_ me strength. Just seeing you. Even when you are angry and won't admit..."

"Admit what?"

"That you recognize me." She folds her hands together, as if in prayer, then wrings them. "You're so afraid of being taken in, you can't..."

"Stop this," Sasha tells her, almost pleadingly. "Whatever your reasons are, just stop this." He turns his back on her and begins to walk away. "Jenkins we're _leaving_! I've had enough."

"Sasha," she says, her voice almost a whisper. "If I had taken the way out you gave me, when Mama and Papa were with Maria in Yekaterinburg and Alexei was too ill to be moved, and we met again... Met as we're meeting now, in this very theater room... If you weren't so scarred from knowing I was meant to be shot to death... Would you know me _then_?"

He stops in his tracks. "_How_," he says breathlessly, his eyes widening, "do you know about that?"

"Because it's _me_, Sasha," she says one last time. "Because how can I forget that you asked me to choose life and I couldn't bring myself to?"

Sasha still knows it's a lie (it _has _to be), but he's so taken in by now, maybe because deep down he _wants_ to be, that he is willing to lose himself and pretend with her.

With this strange woman who just so happens to look like Anastasia.

Let them both be play actors, if it will give him this. This one moment where he can almost -just_ almost_- believe.

He turns around, runs to her and grabs her shoulders. His mouth slams down on hers, but she doesn't seem to mind. It is a rough kiss, though, as angry as it is passionate.

His next one, when he calms down and feels tears in his eye, is closer to being gentle.

"If it's not you, don't ever tell me," is all he has left to say on the matter.

* * *

Sasha wakes up in a cold sweat, panting. But he has better comfort than Jenkins this morning.

A woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to Anastasia shares his bed, her bare body wrapped in sheets, a contented smile on her face... He almost thinks he can hear her _purr_, practically.

Is he wrong for using her like this? When he knows she's not Anastasia? Maybe. But he's_ used _to thinking of himself as a terrible person. Also, if she's lying, that makes_ her _one, too.

Which means, quite frankly, they very well may _deserve_ each other.

Of course, in his heart, he'll always be aware that the woman who keeps him from falling apart now, eight years after the fact, is not the same girl in the sepia photograph in his nightstand.

He ripped it out of a magazine, three years ago, and it's the only picture he has of her.

The _real_ her.

Still, Sasha kisses the temple of the imposter and tucks the sheets and blankets more securely around her before ringing the bell for Jenkins to run his bath.

He's a good enough man to the fake one, even though he's never sure he actually loves her, but he will dream of the _real _Anastasia every night for as long as he lives.

**AN: Reviews welcome.**


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